I feel that we have very few actual voters on the site. Most members do not bother to vote too much. However voting in SE sites is essential. In my opinion, among other reasons (help good questions/answer distinguish, help keep the unanswered questions number low, etc), it also creates engagement and motivation and people want to visit and revisit and offer more to the community.

I compare our stats and votes with craftcms SE, which is a similar to ours website (similar age, number of users). They may have more daily questions, so more reasons to vote, but their community seems more passionate about voting, therefore crediting answers and questions - they overly seem to be more engaged. Their number of votes is a lot higher than the analogy of the number of daily questions they have compared to us.

So, I am wondering if here at JSE we should become a little bit warmer about voting.

What do you think?
Shall we encourage users to be more generous with their votes?
How could we make users be aware of the importance of voting?

I have seen so many good questions and answers left with 0 votes in our site.

Another stat from our site:
There are about 5000 questions + 7000+ answers. This means that for each user there are about 12000+ reasons to vote. However, it's only me with about 4000 votes, then 5 users with 1000-2000 votes, 1 user with ~850 votes and all the others have voted less than 500 times.

Original Vote Early, Vote Often blog post by Jeff Atwood:

As a lurker I would definitely say that the lack of voting makes this look like a dying site
– Charlie BrumbaughNov 23 '17 at 3:18

2

Absolutely! There are many unrecognised questions and answers that would benefit from some upvotes so they are more obvious. Some questions and answers I don't feel qualified to vote on but I can certainly make more of an effort on the stuff I do know. (Upvoted this question!)
– Neil RobertsonDec 23 '17 at 10:45

I agree, voters need to be a bit more generous when they find a correct and educational answer. When done appropriately, more reputation points will lead to more engagement, more privileges, more interest in moderation, and increases to the quality of posts.

Of course the risks of upvoting on less deserving or undeserving will have a scarring effect on this site as a researching tool.

This site is noticeably less informed about good coding practices (or even coding as a whole). This is because people who are drawn to CMSs as a gateway into the web development industry are seldom equipped with the necessary knowledge to differentiate between "the good, the bad, and the ugly".

For example, when JSX users upvote an incorrect solution, not only are they potentially learning bad practices, they are effectively encouraging others to "blindly trust" the bad content. ...and let's be honest, CMS users are often looking for shortcuts and are very likely to copy-paste.

So what needs to be (urgently, passionately, earnestly) done is a call to knowledgeable few on this site to review all questions, answers, and comments. Call out the concerns, test the answers, clarify the questions, and vote in a way that speaks the truth and rewards good, correct, educational, complete content without feeling like a sledgehammer to the face.

I find that, compared to my behavior on Stackoverflow, I seldom flag/close/downvote on this site. I am more likely to leave a whistleblower-type comment or ask the OP for improvement. Stackoverflow clearly has a higher standard for content, but it also has a reputation for having "rough feedback", so some of the appeal for newer Joomla developers to come here is in the "softness" of the community.

On a personal level, I wish I could help more here to improve questions. The fact is that I am too new to Joomla to understand the "half-complete" questions -- so I am powerless to attempt to clarify by editing or even attempt to ask for clarification. I have done virtually all I can do to questions tags with [php], [mysql], [json], and [regex]. Beyond those tags, I am generally unqualified.

I will continue to do everything that I can to help -- as we all should -- because that is the spirit of Joomla.

Thanks for your recent help in improving the many questions you have edited. I often notice typos and see some questions where the OP maybe speaks a different first language but hesitate to interfere if the meaning of the question is clear.
– Neil RobertsonSep 11 '18 at 7:49

1

I fear that by not "perfecting" the language in questions and answers, the expected standard of "care" is lowered. I don't think ESL users should take offense to edits. By writing informative comments in the edit, the original author can be educated about how to improve there English and/or question formatting.
– mickmackusa♦Sep 11 '18 at 7:58

Yes, please carry on! I like the end result and you are doing a great job.
– Neil RobertsonSep 11 '18 at 8:00

1

I have been actively working with the JDay Australia 2019 organising committee for the past couple of months. You will soon see a flurry of advertisements, starting with a comprehensive survey which seeks Joomla-centric data as well as informs Joomla users about volunteer opportunities and support channels. I am strenuously encouraging everyone at the JUG Brisbane Meetup to become active on JSX. I just got my boss to post his first answer today. This site is in need of an audience spike and improved questions/answers. Everything that is well-intended helps this community.
– mickmackusa♦Sep 11 '18 at 8:03

Thanks, this is exciting! Joomla volunteers have made a massive investment in the official Joomla Forums but from what I can see, the Stack Exchange format is far superior for finding the best answer to a question. I have pretty much given up on the Forums and put all my effort in here. By the way I think most people abbreviate Joomla Stack Exchange as JSE rather than JSX although it's pretty obvious what you mean.
– Neil RobertsonSep 11 '18 at 8:08

1

Admittedly, I tend to be strict on my question upvoting criteria because I think upvote tallies send a powerful message to new users. I ask myself if a question is unique, considered, researched, attempted, and complete; if it is ALL those things, I upvote. If it is none of those things, I consider downvoting after my request for improvement is ignored. I am trying to set a new trend with JSX.
– mickmackusa♦Sep 11 '18 at 8:10